If we look at this from the perspective of the AU, she's obviously an Arion, a member of the proud Homo Sapiens Supremis race who is merely pretending to be human. In reality, she could pull those dock pilings out of the seabed and toss them like a spear if she was so inclined.

Per the tenets of the AU, the Arions on Earth are here to encourage chaos and anarchy and conflict along with the destruction of our environment. Once they've helped us screw things up badly enough, and the secret Arions such as Anna have corrupted enough of our leaders, we may be willing to accept their lifeline to end our wars and fix our broken economies and environment. Of course, their price will heavy -- we'll have to swear allegiance to their Empire.

Whether that leads to war (we humans are a stubborn, independent bunch) or if these underground Arions manage to corrupt enough of our leaders (they already have a lot of them in their "pockets", if you know what I mean) to get their support, is unknown at this time. The moment of truth is still a few decades in the future.

We can only hope the Velorian Protectors will quietly and secretly do their job to discover and eliminate these Arions. The fact that this Anna is willing to put her image out there is a statement that she's a Prime and she's unafraid of the Protectors. Not very smart, for Protectors are powerful beyond measuring. But Arions are nothing if not arrogant and proud, sometimes to a fault. In any case, their war is under the radar screen so far. Very few of us are aware it is being fought.

Here's a rare picture of a Protector in uniform, a sight that very few people on Earth have seen. Once the Arions declare themselves openly, we'll see a lot more of these Protectors.

If you need any further convincing, here's a very popular actress (who is secretly an Arion) proving that an assault rifle blast is not only survivable, but rather trivial. Just a bunch of heat and sparks as the bullets shatter and ricochet on impact, this concentrated fully-automatic fire merely heating her skin to incandescence.

She finds it amusing, given she's unhurtable by any weapons we humans possess (well, other than maybe a nuke):

I love those mini "stories" that get posted as longer captions to images from time to time, thanks.
Also, the girl in the video is hot The music and that slight breeze give her a divine flair. She just shouldn't shake her hips so quickly and un-divine-ly

For the record, another actress who is actually a Protector. Hollywood has turned out to be a good place for these extraordinary women to hide in plain sight. Although in this case, this actress is rarely seen in her native blonde. (Looking forward to seeing her again as an uber-blonde in Sin City 2.)

And yes, she's taken off her contacts to reveal her natural eyes in this picture. As you can see by her eyes if nothing else, she's not really one of us.

Question: Is she about to send a pulse of supersonic air to blow some Arions away?

Living in L.A., she can't stand all that smog in the summertime anymore. Finally having enough of living under a pall of smog, she decides to clear up the sky a bit and starts to fill her lungs. After she's done inhaling every bit of exhaust fumes covering the metropolitan area, she covers her mouth with her hand and exhales sharply. Two seconds later, a hyper dense black ball of pure poison lies in her hand, a perfectly spherical shiny ball. She could pressurize it further until the black ball turns into a diamond, but she doesn't want to. You know, when you're able to create these things on a whim, there's not really much of a catch to them anymore. So she just puts it into her fireplace at home, where it will fuel romantic fires of the next ten-or-so winters.
She did the citizens of L.A. a great service that day, but she's not interested in being praised for that. The way she sees it, the best goddess is the one whose deeds are subtle enough so that the lesser beings can account them as natural wonders and pure luck.
Content with herself, she strolls down to the beaches of malibu, where she enjoys the clear blue sky and puts the female lifeguards there to shame.

Living in L.A., she can't stand all that smog in the summertime anymore. Finally having enough of living under a pall of smog, she decides to clear up the sky a bit and starts to fill her lungs. After she's done inhaling every bit of exhaust fumes covering the metropolitan area, she covers her mouth with her hand and exhales sharply. Two seconds later, a hyper dense black ball of pure poison lies in her hand, a perfectly spherical shiny ball. She could pressurize it further until the black ball turns into a diamond, but she doesn't want to. You know, when you're able to create these things on a whim, there's not really much of a catch to them anymore. So she just puts it into her fireplace at home, where it will fuel romantic fires of the next ten-or-so winters.
She did the citizens of L.A. a great service that day, but she's not interested in being praised for that. The way she sees it, the best goddess is the one whose deeds are subtle enough so that the lesser beings can account them as natural wonders and pure luck.
Content with herself, she strolls down to the beaches of malibu, where she enjoys the clear blue sky and puts the female lifeguards there to shame.

Fantastic little piece and quite creative too.

(formerly Anon, still Librarian)

"What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?" ("Gentleman" John Marcone)

I imagine it to be very hard to be disciplined about the course of narration. Not trailing off, not forgetting to put in the important details, not concentrating on single aspects too intensely. You guys never seem to have problems with that, but I actually guess that there's more than one reason why stories aren't published in the hundreds per day

Esteban wrote: I imagine it to be very hard to be disciplined about the course of narration. Not trailing off, not forgetting to put in the important details, not concentrating on single aspects too intensely. You guys never seem to have problems with that, but I actually guess that there's more than one reason why stories aren't published in the hundreds per day

Well, beta-reading/editing is a big part of creating a good story as much as writing. Having a good editor (or more) allows you to keep the story from derailing and gives you a second (thrid, fourth...) point of view on the events.
Wehn I wrote my continuation to Serena I had almost daily feedback from my beta-readers, to the point that some passages are actually more them than mines.

Camille Jones wrote: Yeah I try to at least focus on what's important or what's interesting. By the way, I'm loving these vignettes? Also, Shadar, not all brown-haired superwomen are evil, right?

In other worlds maybe not. On Velor, brunette = Arion = evil, which is something I never really appreciated.

(formerly Anon, still Librarian)

"What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?" ("Gentleman" John Marcone)

Camille Jones wrote: Yeah I try to at least focus on what's important or what's interesting. By the way, I'm loving these vignettes? Also, Shadar, not all brown-haired superwomen are evil, right?

In other worlds maybe not. On Velor, brunette = Arion = evil, which is something I never really appreciated.[/quote]

In the AU, the Homo Sapiens Supremis race was originally gen-engineered on the planet Velor, and everyone was run through the Maternity Engine which ensured that their genome was pure and unchanging through the generations. Their original genome was 100% blonde blue-eyed as it all came from a very few mating couples who were gen-engineered from abducted humans (removed roughly 1000AD) from a small village that would now be within the borders of modern-day Sweden. The villager's genome was very simple and uncomplicated given this village was very isolated at that time in the north of the Viking world. It was an advanced race named the Galen who did the abductions and tweaked human DNA (by combining it with alien DNA) to create chimeras, all of whom lived on Velor. They were initially designed to become Procreators for the Galen, perfect women with enhanced abilities who could bear and raise their children. (Presumably, the Galen females had developed a serious fertility issue.)

Many years later, there was a civil war on Velor, fought between Naturalists and the Purists. The Naturalists didn't want to use the Maternity Engine to control reproduction as dictated by the Galen. They wanted to revert to natural childbirth and natural reproduction. To let Nature take its course. The bitterly contested issue broke the Supremis race into two factions, with the Naturalists leaving to live on a planet they named Aria. So far, both groups are genetically the same, and the average Homo Sapiens Supremis has about 1000x the strength of a human, and is essentially invulnerable to injury, can fly, project heat vision and see through things with neutrino/tachyon detectors in their eyes.

Once on Aria, a highly contagious retro-virus was introduced to the population whose goal was to wipe out the recessive genes for blonde and blue eyed children, replacing it with the dominant brown. The fanatical Arions wanted to ensure they'd never be mistaken for their now hated enemy, the Velorians.

The virus backfired (sometimes called a Gene Bomb) and weakened the children born to 90% of population (to about 20 times that of normal humans), creating the Betans, even as it enhanced the strength (to an average of 2000x that of ordinary humans) for the remaining 10% of children, creating the Primes. The organ that enabled them to fly was also deactivated in most cases, although some Primal bloodlines have retained the ability to fly (the Aeries family in particular). The only thing the retro-virus did as intended was to ensure the Arions looked differently than the universally uber-blonde Velorian Purists. Nobody born on Aria would ever again be blonde, although many were still blue-eyed, particularly the Primes. Mating between Arions and Velorians is now a capital crime on both worlds.

Subsequently, the Arions formed their Empire and tried to sweep all human worlds into it, believing they could protect humanity from hostile aliens by uniting all of humanity under one banner. Unfortunately, they also considered ordinary humans to be second-class citizens (which, genetically, we are). You can think of them as futuristic Nazis. In fact, my pronunciation for Arion is "Aryan".

As expected, their natural reproduction has allowed their race (with some interbreeding with ordinary humans) to regain significant diversity. (So in that way, they are very different than Earth's Nazis).

Back on Velor, the remaining Purists (with reproduction still controlled by the Maternity Engine) formed the Enlightenment and began to act as Protectors to allow ordinary humans to retain their right to choose to live free and to determine their own future. A handful of Protectors are selected from the strongest children (only girls, given they can be further enhanced), and they are tweaked by a Galen name Aphrodite and given special training. They are much stronger than even Primes. These young Protectors (they enter training at age 16 and graduate by age 18) are then sent out to human worlds across the galaxy, as well as some friendly alien worlds, to act as Planetary Protectors. They age at less than 1/10th the rate of ordinary humans.

As part of a control mechanism engineered in by the Galen, a band of pure gold placed around the neck with dampen the pituitary and other glands, preventing the flow of Orgone in their blood. This weakens them to nearly human levels while they still retain their invulnerability. Both Arions and Velorians are affected by gold. The planets of Aria and Velor both have a gold core, and its field prevents their powers from manifesting while on their home planets.

An ongoing war for the future of humanity is now being fought both above and below ground. On Earth, its mostly below the radar, given that the Supremis were forbidden from intervening on Earth, given we are the last reservoir of un-tweaked humans. We're the seed bank, if you will. Other planets were seeded with humans from Earth, and many were tweaked to allow them to adapt to the environment.

Anyway, that's a thumbnail sketch with a lot of details glossed over. But its basically how we wound up with white hat (blonde) Velorians and black hat (brunette) Arions in the AU. Its why the blonde Velorians (and their Protectors) are good guys while the brunette Arions are the bad guys when it comes to human liberty. The humans of Earth, unlike some other human worlds which have joined the Empire (some willingly, many not), value freedom above all else.

I'm still from Earth, through and through. I was a normal human until I found a meteor that crashed somewhere past my backyard. Ever since then I've had an array of powers including those of a typical Velorian and some more that have not been demonstrated by either side.

Rest assured though, I'll do everything within my power to not let the Earth fall to the Arion Empire.

I'm still from Earth, through and through. I was a normal human until I found a meteor that crashed somewhere past my backyard. Ever since then I've had an array of powers including those of a typical Velorian and some more that have not been demonstrated by either side.

Rest assured though, I'll do everything within my power to not let the Earth fall to the Arion Empire.

A question though, what is the Orgone?

Orgone, as described in the AU, is a highly potent form of energy that can be stored in the fatty tissues of a Supremis' body. They absorb energy from a variety of sources (including the ability to draw extra-dimensional power) and store it as Orgone. When metabolized, it gives them a rich enough energy source to power their remarkable muscles, as well as to levitate and project heat vision.

(Think of the glucose metabolism and fat storage of a human, but multiply the energy potential by thousands of times. It is preferentially stored in the fatty tissues of the female breast which causes Supremis females with very high Orgone concentrations to be rather... dramatic looking. Conversely, when depleted, these same women can have rather boyish chests. Some Supremis females overindulge in Orgone, especially when preparing for battle or a long space flight, and at such times are rather top-heavy. In any case, its pretty obvious which Supremis females are seriously powered-up. And its a curiosity among humans that the breast size of a Supremis is directly related to their power. Those Galen scientists were mostly men, as you might imagine.)

Once a Supremis is depleted of Orgone, their strength and overall vitality drops close to that of a human and they are at risk of injury or death if they face an empowered Supremis. Combat between Velorians and Arions generally takes the form of depleting one's opponent of Orgone until they become vulnerable enough to defeat. Once depleted, it could take hours or even days to draw enough energy to saturate their tissues again, depending on the energy source. (The photosphere of a star is a really good place to power up, but you can't get there unless you've already got some juice.) If you deplete a Supremis and drop them into liquid nitrogen, they will be helplessly contained for all time.

Energy depletion can take place during combat (heat vision drains Orgone really fast), but also during sex, where females are particularly good at depleting males. (A great deal of free Orgone is generated during a male orgasm. Per Supremis slang, its sometimes called MoJo.) Females also store more Orgone than males (in general), so they have greater endurance. Female Supremis also can broadcast very powerful pheromones to unbalance, distract and otherwise compel any males they are fighting to engage them more "intimately" than just duking it out. Well trained male warriors can resist this siren call, but they often have to withdraw from battle to keep their wits about them.

(If a human inhales those pheromones, they are helplessly afflicted until they burn it off. That can be very dangerous for anyone with a weak heart.)

Bottom line... Orgone is the "GO" juice that powers a Velorian or Arion. And it is the result of an extensive genetic modification of the human genome.

In your case, Camille, I suspect you've come into contact with the retrovirus that all Supremis carry inside them, which in high enough concentrations has a mutagenic effect on humans. That meteor must have been covered with it. Most humans are not significantly affected by the retrovirus, and often only for brief periods, but those with the right genetic legacy can exhibit tremendous, permanent changes in their DNA. The Supremis call them Latents as they are capable of manifesting Supremis powers when infected with this virus. Being an engineered retrovirus (a left-over from the time when the Galen were genetically engineering the proto-Velorians) it basically splices your DNA, inserting the highly-engineered Supremis genes. If this is your case, you were likely born a Latent and have now been infected. Its completely benign other than granting you super-powers. Good news is that you can't get rid of the bug. You will be a super girl to the end of your days, which will be very, VERY long.

If my speculation is correct, you may or may not be able to pass the virus on. Normally that's not possible, but such events have been recorded, and have allowed an enhanced and otherwise completely invulnerable woman to bring her mate nearly up to her own power level (if he or she is also a Latent.)

I guess I have been schooled thoroughly on the subject of Homo Sapien Supremis. And I guess that does make a bit of sense, considering that I get power-ups whether I absorb a lot of radiation/energy or whenever I get intimate with my boyfriend. And that does explain why my breast get much bigger after such acts as well as my muscles, though the latter doesn't get any bigger just more defined.

One thing though, I am getting other powers outside of the base Velorian or Arion such as telekinesis and by proxy energy manipulation/projection, does that mean that the retrovirus is different depending on each person or do I just have more potential than your average Latent?